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| Africa North |
| Libyan rebels near Misurata struggle to advance |
| 2011-07-04 |
| MISURATA, Libya — Outside Misurata, the rebel army is stuck. For weeks, the fighters opposed to Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi’s government have been bogged down in the lightly wooded areas surrounding this besieged city, pounded by rockets, struggling to advance or even make gains of more than a few hundred yards. “We are just taking a defensive position now,” said Suliman Mohamed Suliman, one of the commanders at the city’s eastern front line. “We can’t [advance] because we don’t have heavy weapons, just light weapons. We need grenades, we need tanks and heavy artillery.” In mid-May, Misurata’s newly improvised volunteer forces managed to expel Gaddafi’s professional troops from their city, about 130 miles east of the capital, Tripoli, after weeks of closely fought urban warfare. But despite their early successes, they are struggling to make progress. With the front lines now more than 15 miles from Misurata, the shift in terrain and the more sophisticated tactics, logistics and command structure required have challenged rebel fighters. “In the beginning, it was street warfare, now it’s changed,” said Al Tahir al-Bour, a coordinator of one of Misurata’s military units. “Now it’s more of a logistics war. Even the weapons are different. First it was just AKs; now [Gaddafi’s troops] are fighting with heavy artillery.” At the western front line, a group of young men sat smoking a hookah and clutching Belgian-made FN rifles, as rockets whooshed overhead. None of them had fired a gun before the revolution began in February. Despite their lack of training and heavy weaponry, morale seemed high, and the fighters said they were confident they could defeat Gaddafi’s forces. The rebel army here is almost entirely made up of volunteer fighters. In the east of the country, army units defected and joined revolutionary fighters, but Misurata’s forces include shopkeepers and truck drivers, businessmen and students. Fighters here said they are grateful for NATO air support but are often frustrated by the coalition’s delayed responses. “If NATO helped us, we could have defeated all of them,” complained Ibrahim al-Zubatta, a commander in one of the city’s brigades, describing a recent battle in which NATO did not bomb Gaddafi’s troops when they were exposed in open country. “Sometimes we put the blame on NATO for the delay in starting operations, but we still want NATO to continue fighting, helping us with logistics and to be a partner in our war.” As the holy month of Ramadan approaches and temperatures soar, the fight is likely to get harder, the fighters say. But despite the current deadlock, they say they remain optimistic. “We are determined to fight, and we can hold, even if it takes 10 years,” said Mohammed bin Tahir. |
| Posted by:Steve White |